And, strangely, he never sang lead on a single song while with The Band (though he was the chief songwriter, both music and lyrics), he only ventured to be a singer once he had started his solo career.
That he was the producer of Neil Diamond's (indeed beautiful) 1976 Beautiful Noise album seems to be largely forgotten these days. Back then it was a big thing, heavily featured on the sleeve,
which helped Neil regain quite some songwriter street credibility. Not with The Band though, the other guys did not like Robbie teaming up with Neil (though Garth Hudson plays organ on the album, Robbie guests with some guitar too) nor his invite to him for The Last Waltz which they saw as Robbie's shameless post-Band-career self-promotion. Ah yes, those unnecessary culture wars ...
Neil apparently had no deeper knowledge of who The Band were and was kind of baffled to be invited to their farewell gig. He did know Robbie Robertson as a neighbor though.
Neil Diamond told Q magazine July 2008 that he wrote this song to convince Robbie Robertson, the guitarist with The Band, to produce his album. He explained: "We knew each other peripherally: we both lived in Malibu. But I wanted to write a song to convince him to work with me. I was at a hotel in New York with my two little girls. We were on the fourth floor, the windows were wide open, and right beneath us on Fifth Avenue there was a Puerto Rican parade going by. The music was amazing, full of rhythm and joy. My daughter Marjorie said, 'What a beautiful noise, Daddy.' Boom! I had the title, I wrote the song and when I played it to Robbie he liked it." Robbie Robertson went on to produce the album for which this song became the title track.I personally think it's a great track and when I lived in NYC for a while the street noises every morning would remind me of the song - it really encapsulates the city for me.
